Castelvolturno in Shock as Police Discover Bodies of Mother and Daughter

Castelvolturno in Shock as Police Discover Bodies of Mother and Daughter

Post-mortem examination to establish cause of death

CASERTA – Eight years ago, Elisabetta Grande and her daughter Maria Belmonte disappeared. Recent episodes of the TV programme Chi l’ha visto? [Has Anyone Seen Them?] have dealt with the case. Yesterday, police officers from Caserta found what are believed to be their bodies hidden in a cavity under the garage floor at the Castelvolturno home of Domencio Belmonte, Elisabetta’s husband and Maria’s father. Only post-mortem examination will be able to reveal the cause of death as no obvious signs of violence are visible on the remains, which are little more than skeletons. One man who may know how they died is Domenico Belmonte, a retired doctor who served for many years as director of the Poggioreale prison hospital. Dr Belmonte is currently being questioned at the Santa Maria Capua Vetere public prosecutor’s office, where magistrates are also questioning Maria Belmonte’s former husband, who has not been named. Neither man has been detained for the time being.

But Dr Belmonte in particular has many things to explain to assistant public prosecutor Luigi Gay, who is co-ordinating inquiries. There is the matter of how the bodies came to be in the grave-like cavity and why he failed to report the disappearance when his wife and daughter vanished eight years ago. It was Elisabetta’s brother Lorenzo Grande who prompted inquires three months ago when he approached first the police and then RAITre’s Chi l’ha visto? programme. Mr Grande, who is from Calabria and lives in Catanzaro, said that he tried to get in touch with his sister in 2008, not having heard from her for several years. He contacted his brother-in-law because he was unable to trace Elisabetta’s whereabouts. Domenico Belmonte is understood to have told him that he had heard nothing from his wife and daughter for years: “I have had no contact with them for a long time”, he wrote in reply to Mr Grande’s letter requesting news of Elisabetta and Maria. Early investigations revealed that the two women had been missing for at least four years, since the date of the last movement on Elisabetta Grande’s bank account, which continued to receive her pension but from which no money was withdrawn. This means the bodies were discovered twelve years after the women’s disappearance but only a few months before the start of investigations, which have also involved officers from the unsolved crimes unit at the central operational service (SCO).

Officers searching the house used special instruments for detecting human remains. First they scoured the garden and then they moved inside before searching the garage and finding the cavity. In recent years, Dr Belmonte had become a virtual recluse. His career as a successful doctor, much respected by all including the prisoners he looked after, was tarnished by involvement in a judicial inquiry into an outbreak of hepatitis C at the Naples prison. From then on, he became a completely different man, shutting himself away and letting himself go to the point of squalor. It had been years since he last left the house at Castelvolturno, where he moved with his wife and daughter following his legal troubles. Neighbours saw Dr Belmonte only when he came out to mow the lawn – he was doing this when police officers arrived – and up till this morning, the last people to go inside were the social workers who visited a few years ago.